Our Tours

Minneapolis Downtown Walking Tour

Our most popular tour with more than 20 sites in 1.5 to 2 hours. So much is packed into just 2.7 miles downtown. See Purple Rain filming locations as well as the places where Prince played and hung out. We show you legendary music venues like First Avenue, the Fine Line, and the century-old Hennepin Avenue theaters, all of which still rock today. We also visit legendary venues of yesterday like Prince’s club Glam Slam, Jay’s Longhorn (considered the CBGB’s of Minneapolis), legendary country-music venue the Flame Bar (where the biggest country stars of the 40’s and 50’s played), and many others. The tour is steeped in popular music history with locations and stories about Prince, Bob Dylan, The Replacements, Husker Du, The Suicide Commandos, as well as national artists like the Talking Heads, the Ramones, Ike and Tina Turner, the Temptations, BB King, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, George Jones, The Carter Family, Buck Owens and many others.

While music history is the focus of the tour we also point out lots of interesting Minneapolis history factoids along the way including interesting pop culture history, political history, and lots of facts about Minneapolis architecture and the development of downtown. If you love Rock and Roll history and are also interested in learning about Minneapolis history then this is the tour for you.

The tour starts on Nicollet Mall at the easily accessible corner of Nicollet & 7th Street conveniently located just two blocks from the Nicollet Mall light rail station and next to the IDS Center. The tour includes about 2.7 miles of moderately-paced walking and takes about 2 hours to complete. The tour concludes near the starting point. The tour is ADA accessible.